we meet with them. While other
exchanges are attempting to reach
out to the buy-side, you can clearly
see where the interests match up
and IEX certainly matches up with
their interests. The other exchanges’ interests do not and that is just
a fact.

HM: You hired Sara Furber as your
new head of listings. For those looking to list on IEX instead of NYSE or
Nasdaq, what do you tell them?

BK:A lot of companies have been
very frustrated with the lack of
information on how the market
actually works. Some of them
believe Nasdaq or NYSE are the
largest exchanges, but they aren’t
trading 85% of trading volume
anymore. The largest exchange in
fact holds 14% of the volume. It’s
much the same way that we built
our relationship with the buy-side, we didn’t say anything other
than what we know to be true.
It’s about educating them about
what’s going on, how it affects
them, how it will affect their
shareholders and this is what we
are doing differently.

There has been a very positive
reaction to an increasing education about what’s happening.
Similar to the buy-side, once you
realise where the priority sits
and where the alignment is, it
starts to develop relationships
that are based on a mutual trust.
The relationship with the buy-side developed over many years,
and we are going to take the
amount of time necessary to earn
that amount of trust with issuers.

Surprisingly, the conversation
ends up with the issuers saying
that Nasdaq and NYSE are more
similar than they are dissimilar.

Both are highly electronic, they all
take rebates, they have specialised
order types and they all make more
money from selling market data
technology than they do from actually trading. They are very similar,
but IEX is different and I think that
helps start the discussion. We are
in the early stages but Sara Furber
was an incredible hire for us and
we’re super excited to have her on
the team.

RR: An interesting dynamic in allof this is historically an issuer hasa choice of two exchanges, andmany would ask shareholdersdoes it matter where I list and theanswer was always no. They aregetting different answers now. Weare excited to disrupt a 45-year oldduopoly.

HM: What are your focuses for

2017?

BK: Execution quality and listings
are our two main focuses. It’s data
driven analysis focused on quality
of execution and listings. I think
people will be surprised at the poor
execution quality on the exchanges
that pay the highest rebates.

RR: It comes down to proving how
the experience will lend itself to
bigger market share, which is why
we aren’t consumed with market
share on a daily basis. We are growing rapidly and we expect this to
continue.